The Green Man (New York Review Books Classics)

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Maurice is a fifty-three-year-old self-centered boozehound, an accomplished womanizer living with his second wife, thirteen-year-old daughter and eighty-year-old father; Maurice also happens to be charming, articulate, Cambridge educated and in possession of both keen intellect and vivid imagination. Maurice Allington is not the kind of guy you want to get mixed up with—he may be the well-known proprietor of the inn The Green Man, but he drinks far too much, ignores his wife and daughter, and spends his free time propositioning his friend’s wife. When he starts seeing things around the inn, we have to wonder if his drinking has finally addled his wits, for Maurice certainly doesn’t believe in the ghosts that he advertises to lure guests. In 1958–1959 Amis made the first of two visits to the United States, as visiting fellow in creative writing at Princeton University and a visiting lecturer in other north-eastern universities. On returning to Britain, he fell into a rut, and he began looking for another post. After 13 years at Swansea, Amis became a fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, in 1961, but regretted the move within a year, finding Cambridge an academic and social disappointment. He resigned in 1963, intent on moving to Majorca, although he actually moved no further than London. [17] [18] Though not explicitly science fiction, The Anti-Death League takes liberties with reality not found in Amis's earlier novels. It introduces a speculative bent that continued to develop in others of his genre novels, such as The Green Man (1969) (mystery/horror) and The Alteration (1976) ( alternative history). Much of this speculation concerned the improbability of the existence of any benevolent deity involved in human affairs.

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, Introduction by Christopher Hitchens (an omnibus edition of On Drink, Everyday Drinking and How's Your Glass?) Kingsley Amis was born on 16 April 1922 in Clapham, south London, the only child of William Robert Amis (1889–1963), a clerk – "quite an important one, fluent in Spanish and responsible for exporting mustard to South America" – for the mustard manufacturer Colman's in the City of London, [3] and his wife Rosa Annie (née Lucas). [4] [5] The Amis grandparents were wealthy. William Amis's father, the glass merchant Joseph James Amis, owned a mansion called Barchester at Purley, then part of Surrey. Amis considered J. J. Amis – always called "Pater" or "Dadda" – "a jokey, excitable, silly little man", whom he "disliked and was repelled by". [6] With The Anti-Death League (1966), Amis begins to show some of the experimentation – in content, if not style – that marked much of his work in the 1960s and 1970s. His departure from the strict realism of his early comedic novels is not so abrupt as it might first appear. He had been avidly reading science fiction since a boy and developed that interest in the Christian Gauss Lectures of 1958, while visiting Princeton University. These were published that year as New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction, giving a serious yet light-handed treatment of what the genre had to say about man and society. Amis was knighted in 1990. In August 1995 he fell, following a suspected stroke. After apparently recovering, he worsened and died on 22 October 1995 at St Pancras Hospital, London. [19] [20] He was cremated and his ashes laid to rest at Golders Green Crematorium.The verse mini-epic, Sir Gawain and The Green Knight - you know Gawain as Sir Galahad, purest of the Knights of the Round Table - is the story of Galahad's fight to the death with the Devil. Culture Trip launched in 2011 with a simple yet passionate mission: to inspire people to go beyond their boundaries and experience what makes a place, its people and its culture special and meaningful — and this is still in our DNA today. We are proud that, for more than a decade, millions like you have trusted our award-winning recommendations by people who deeply understand what makes certain places and communities so special.

While his guests are happy with the ghost stories, the Inn, the tankards of ale, wine and hard liquor available on the menu, along with the food, which recently has been recommended by a columnist for a newspaper, Maurice is not. Maurice is an alcoholic, and his life feels so painful he has no wish to stop drinking even as he despises himself for it. Despite the efforts and love of his family and friends, Maurice has built walls of disassociation around himself. He is haunted with memories about his first wife’s death and a severe hypochondria, along with an obsession with sex. But the worst of his nightmares is his fear of death. All of which serves to avoid dealing with the man called Maurice. He is frozen, unable to go forward, weighted down by the past. He is not a stupid man, in fact he is well educated. He enlisted the help of two different therapists, and the local doctor frequently comes to visit him. But nothing seems to chase away the ghosts of his past which haunt Maurice’s days and nights. Nothing prevents his self-hatred and disgust with who he is. All he is capable of is dulling the pain with drink, and going through the expected daily motions required of him.

Book Genre: British Literature, Classics, European Literature, Fantasy, Fiction, Ghosts, Gothic, Horror, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels, Paranormal